ARTIST STATEMENT

I'm interested in moments that usually disappear before we think to remember them.

A walk. The sound of traffic. The rhythm of footsteps crossing an intersection. The feeling of humidity on skin. Birds talking to each other. The way attention drifts between bodies, architecture, weather, and sound. These moments disappear almost as soon as they happen. Most never seem important enough to remember, yet they quietly shape how we move through the world. My work begins by trying to notice them before they disappear.

I have come to think of drawing as a way of paying attention rather than making pictures. It allows me to slow down enough to observe how people move through space, how environments shape the body, and how everyday experiences leave traces that are often forgotten before the day is over. Drawing is how I learn to stay present.

My background in archival studies has shaped this way of working. Archives taught me that what survives history is never everything. Every collection is the result of someone deciding what was worth keeping and what could disappear. I began wondering if drawing could become another kind of archive—not of facts or events, but of fleeting experiences that usually go unrecorded.

That question continues to guide my practice: Can a drawing preserve the feeling of agitation? Can a painting hold the rhythm of your walk home? What remains after a moment has passed?

My process begins through environmental sampling: gathering impressions through movement, sensation, listening, and attentive looking. Quick drawings become abstract field notes that record gestures, rhythms, textures, and encounters rather than fixed images. In the studio, these observations are translated through painting, layering, carving, accumulation, erasure, and found materials. Each stage becomes an act of translation, allowing experience to shift from body to drawing, drawing to painting, and memory to material.

I am not interested in documenting the world exactly as it is, but in the quiet significance of experiences that usually pass unnoticed. These seemingly small moments are what make up our lives, accumulating over time to shape how we remember, move, and understand the places we inhabit. The more closely I observe them, the more they reveal themselves to be worthy of care.

I hope the work encourages a slower kind of looking. The paintings, drawings, and performances are not intended to document a particular place or event, but to make visible the quiet exchanges between our bodies and the environments around us.

BIO

Erica Hart is a queer artist from Tkaronto (Toronto), based in Tiohtià/Mooniyang (Montréal), working primarily in drawing, painting, and performance. Their practice examines attention, embodiment, and the subtle ways bodies and environments shape one another through everyday experience.

Rooted in archival studies and somatic approaches, Hart’s work considers drawing as a form of record-keeping—not of events or facts, but of fleeting experiences that often disappear before they are remembered. Through abstract mark-making, environmental sampling, and processes of layering, accumulation, carving, and erasure, Hart translates movement, sensation, sound, and observation into visual forms that invite slower ways of looking.

Hart holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University and a Master of Information Studies from McGill University, where they focused on archival research and preservation. Their archival work has included visual and cultural collections at Concordia University, including the Canadian Women Artists History Initiative (CWAHI) and the Digital Image & Slide Collection (DISC), as well as zine archiving with QPRIG McGill. They have also pursued independent studies in somatic and body-based approaches to perception and movement.

Hart’s work has been exhibited at Art Mûr, Studio XX, White Wall Studio, and Twist Gallery, and published in Artist Drawing Magazine UK, The Pit Magazine, and Section 1 Magazine. From 2017 to 2019, Hart co-founded Somewhere Shared, a studio-led artist collective focused on collaborative exhibitions in non-traditional spaces. They have facilitated drawing and movement-based workshops at Moving Just Fine, Studio 414, and Circuit-Est, extending their interest in observation and embodiment into collective practices.